


The Eaten Night

by sevenofspade



Category: Yumekui Kenbun: Nightmare Inspector
Genre: Case Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 15:03:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15003434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: A cotumer with dreams of blood and flesh eating came to the teashop.





	The Eaten Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rose Argent (roseargent)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> This takes place early in the series.

_The teahouse 'Ginseikan' sits on a street corner of the city. It is a place where many come seeking help._

Hiruko was sitting at his usual place when Mizuki welcomed a new costumer in. The woman was very tall and her eyes were two different colours. One was a brown so light it was almost golden, the other darker than the heart of a moonless night.

"I am looking for the Baku Hiruko," she said.

Mizuki guided her to Hiruko's table and gave her a cup of coffee.

The woman took it gratefully. "I have a nightmare," she said. So far, so usual. "I want to understand it."

Huh.

"Tell me about the nightmare." Hiruko spun his cane in the air idly.

"It happens once a year for several days." The porcelain cup echoed as it shook against the saucer. She continued, "I am in the dark. I cannot see anything or hear anything. None of my senses work, in fact. It is just... empty. I am eating raw meat and I am being eaten. I cannot stop it!"

"How horrible," Mizuki said. "Hiruko can stop it."

The woman shook her head. "I just want to understand. I think I could live with it if only I understood." She put a medallion on the table. "This is gold, I can pay."

"It is very pretty," Mizuki said, picking up the medallion. Mizuki handed back the medallion.

It fell open in her hand, revealing a lock of dark hair.

"Oh! I'm sorry," the woman said. "My mother had this made when I was a baby. It's my hair from back then."

"I only require payment in nightmares," Hiruko said.

The woman nodded.

"How do you know you are eating if your senses do not work?" Hiruko asked.

"I just do," she said. "The way you know things in your dreams, deep in your bones."

It had been a long time since Hiruko had had dreams of his own, but he still nodded.

She continued, "I cannot touch what I am eating or taste it. I have tried many different meats trying to find what it is. I know that when I find it I will know, but I haven't found it yet."

He stood. " _Sleep, then, and escape reality for a while_."

They stepped into the dream. It was pitch black and overly warm. Something like a film of sweat clung to Hiruko's skin. There was no heavy metallic smell of blood in the air. No smell at all, in fact. If water had a smell it would smell like this. He could only barely feel the cane in his hand. Being a Baku had its advantages -- he became part of the dream, but not entirely of it. Both within and without.

Hiruko waved his cane in a wide arc and manifested a dream light.

The woman was curled up next to him, floating in the dark. He tapped her shoulder. She did not react. It was true then, that her senses did not work. he had wondered if perhaps it had simply been that there hadn't been anything for them to react to. Both were true, it seemed.

Part of the woman's hand disappeared, as though bitten off by invisible teeth. She swallowed.

"It begins," Hiruko said. He held the light up higher.

The woman was eating nothing. Her teeth closed on empty air and part of her was bitten off in return. A finger, part of a leg, an eye...

Hiruko shifted the frequency of the light so he could see better.

She was eating a corpse wearing her face. Or it was eating her or both or neither. It was a shadow twin, an unformed mirror. An almost-self.

 

It did not quite have her face. _She_ did not quite have her face either. One had the golden-brown eyes, the other the dark black ones; it was the same for the rest of the features, as though the woman had split into two people.

No. Not quite.

The parts being eaten formed a puzzle. The woman was the puzzle.

 

Hiruko separated the women and stepped between them before they could throw themselves at each other again. "You are sisters. Just because you fought once does not mean you have to keep fighting."

They spoke at the same time, voice bloody and raw, unfinished. "She killed me before I had a chance to live."

"If you did not live, you did not die," Hiruko said. It was only obvious and as a Baku, he should know about unlife and undeath. "You were born as one. Do you understand?"

The entangled twins nodded.

Hiruko returned to the waking world. 

Mizuki gave the woman another cup of coffee even though she hadn't drunk the first one entirely yet. This one the woman drunk, top to bottom in one gulp of burning liquid. Then she turned back to the first cup and drank it too.

"I am Orikasa Yumi," she finally said. She was shaking worse than she had been before.

"You had a twin in the womb," Hiruko said. He paused and started over. "Your mother was pregnant with twins, but before she ever knew it, the twins became one. It happens. Occasionally, when the merge is violent, there is an echo left in dreams. But only occasionally and it is never so cannibalistic, to my knowledge." Was it simply that he was new at this? He did not think it was.

"Thank you for explaining," was the curt reply as Orikasa left.

Her nightmare was a thing of blood and teeth. When Hiruko ate it, it felt almost as though it was trying to eat him back.

* * *

"Do you remember Orikasa Yumi?" Mizuki asked.

Hiruko threw his mind back. The eaten twin. It was a while ago -- how much he forgot exactly -- but yes. He remembered. He nodded at Mizuki.

She passed him the newspaper. Orikasa had been arrested for several charges of murder and cannibalism. She'd been condemned to capital punishment, but the execution had been delayed on account of her being pregnant.

**Author's Note:**

> The twins merging in the womb is a real phenomenon known as [tetragametic chimerism](https://www.academia.edu/202539/Which_Half_Is_Mommy_Tetragametic_Chimerism_and_Trans-Subjectivity).


End file.
